So, I tracked every single gold roll last year and here is the general gist of what I got. I work in pricing, so I do alot of business cases on offers.
XP: 1.3M normal server + 200k HC server. I used this to start all my racials at lev 3-4 this past year. I spent ~1M on ~24 lives last year. The average XP stones I spent was about 42k (some were at around 32k, and some were more). I use a 50 pots on my lives, which I purchase at 20-25% off when they are available (so lets say 1 pot is 450 points - ((5595/12)*80%)).
Now that we know that One 50 pot is about 450 points, we can see the value of those first mins in the harbor/korthos. By using the XP stones I saved from the daily gold rolls, I prob saved an average of 20 mins of 50 pot time per life, or (20 mins x 24 lives) 480 mins. 480 mins is about 1.3 50 pots or lets call it 450 points X 1.3 or 585 DDO points. Ok, so the gold rolls to me for XP only are wroth about 585 DDO points.
Bottom Line for XP stones -
(immaterial)
Now, lets look at what I received outside of daily rolls. I'm gonna say that I probably averaged 100 DDO points/day of stuff. Some of it good (+20 heart once, 2 hearts of wood, excellent and superior XP potions, Slayer boosts), and some of it like whatever, (maybe 2 mounts, like 1,000 hands, cosmetics). I would never buy mounts, or cosmetics (just not my thing), but I would buy slayer pots/XP pots. The hearts of wood are nice, but you can get those for free in game, so I wont weight those as high (except the +20 heart). I feel like if you remove the stuff that I wouldn't buy and do an estimate, I'd say I averaged about 60 DDO points/day or about 1,800/month.
Bottom Line for Stuff -
material loss for SSG
Its a business, so giving away almost 2k DDO points a month and multiplying it by X number of VIP subs is massive. That's 24k points a year...basically $150 in DDO points on a double bonus sale.
So, what does SSG do here. They probably wont give VIP daily rolls. However, I do think there is a solution. (at least in my eyes).
Part 1 Give VIP daily gold rolls that only give XP, and then once a week, call it a platinum Roll and give out the bonus stuff. This way, we feel like we are getting something (starting at lev 3-4 each life), and maybe getting a nice bonus item. I've already proven about that XP stones are immaterial in terms of DDO points, so why not. Those are NOT the bottom line that Sev is speaking to.
Part 2 Increase monthly DDO points from 500 to 750. This is an extra 3k/year, which is about 12% of the 24k (earned) via dially gold rolls. This is not game breaking in any way, and shows VIP that we get 50% more DDO points than before. That at least is something.
Anyway, back to the game
Nico